LATE 18TH/EARLY 19TH CENTURY

It has been suggested that this may have been conceived as a wine-cooler for a naval tavern, so it is possible that the name to the stern is that of a Tavern, which may have once stood in the ship-building town of Maryport, Cumbria or that it may have been the name of a ship after which the model was conceived. Just such an object is illustrated in an engraving of a tavern interior by George Cruikshank (1792-1878), entitled Sailors Carousing of circa 1825, a copy of which is held in The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.